y.

If Ruth could see me now, was his thought, while he wondered as to what
constituted the real dirt.

"Maybe nobody will be there," Brissenden said, when they dismounted and
plunged off to the right into the heart of the working-class ghetto,
south of Market Street. "In which case you'll miss what you've been
looking for so long."

"And what the deuce is that?" Martin asked.

"Men, intelligent men, and not the gibbering nonentities I found you
consorting with in that trader's den. You read the books and you found
yourself all alone. Well, I'm going to show you to-night some other men
who've read the books, so that you won't be lonely any more."

"Not that I bother my head about their everlasting discussions," he said
at the end of a block. "I'm not interested in book philosophy. But
you'll find these fellows intelligences and not bourgeois swine. But
watch out, they'll talk an arm off of you on any subject under the sun."

"Hope Norton's there," he panted a little later, resisting Martin's
effort to relieve him of the two demijohns. "Norton's an idealist--a
Harvard man. Prodigious memory. Idealism led him to philosophic
anarchy, and his family threw him off. Father's a railroad president and
many times millionnaire, but the son's starving in 'Frisco, editing an
anarchist sheet for twenty-five a month."

Martin was little acquainted in San Francisco, and not at all south of
Market; so he had no idea of where he was being led.

"Go ahead," he said; "tell me about them beforehand. What do they do for
a living? How do they happen to be here?"

"Hope Hamilton's there." Brissenden paused and rested his hands. "Strawn-
Hamilton's his name--hyphenated, you know--comes of old Southern stock.
He's a tramp--laziest man I ever knew, though he's clerking, or trying
to, in a socialist cooperative store for six dollars a week. But he's a
confirmed hobo. Tramped into town. I've seen him sit all day on a bench
and never a bite pass his lips, and in the evening, when I invited him to
dinner--restaurant two blocks away--have him say, 'Too much trouble, old
man. Buy me a package of cigarettes instead.' He was a Spencerian like
you till Kreis turned him to materialistic monism. I'll start him on
monism if I can. Norton's another monist--only he affirms naught but
spirit. He can give Kreis and Hamilton all they want, too."

"Who is Kreis?" Martin asked.

"His rooms we're going to. One time professor--fire